GLENN GUILBEAU
Tiger Rag Editor
The years ending in 6 in LSU history tend to be cause for landmark reunions and much celebration.
–Warren Morris’ walk-off home run into immortality that gave the Tigers a 9-8 victory over Miami and the 1996 national championship at Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha, Nebraska, has its 30-year reunion on June 8.
-LSU men’s basketball went to its last Final Four 20 years ago last April. And the coach, John Brady, goes into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in Natchitoches on June 27 after making the Louisiana Association of Basketball Coaches (LABC) Hall earlier this month and LSU’s Athletic Hall of Fame last September for a triumvirate trifecta.
–One of LSU basketball coach Dale Brown’s greatest teams recently celebrated the 40-year anniversary of its 1986 Final Four.
-LSU baseball coach Skip Bertman’s first of 11 College World Series teams in 1986 turns 40 this June.
But 666 together in Biblical terms is the Mark of the Beast. And as of yet, no reunions are scheduled for the Trilogy of Tragedy that has beset the three major LSU teams in the sports calendar of 2025-26.
The hugely significant back-to-back hires of rock stars Lane Kiffin for LSU Football last November and Will Wade – albeit more of the Gangsta Rap variety – for LSU Men’s Basketball last March – has successfully buried a terrible sports calendar year. Those two hires have gotten LSU fans so excited about the future, that they have sort of forgotten the very recent past and the present.
For this has been the absolute worst sports year at LSU for the Big Three sports of Football, Men’s Basketball and Baseball – the only ones that turn a profit – in Southeastern Conference play since the 1965-66 sports year.
Left in the wake of this Dark Ages season were football coach Brian Kelly and men’s basketball coach Matt McMahon – fired back-to-back in October and March.
Baseball coach Jay Johnson just finished as bad a year as both – if not worse – with more talent and recent winning tradition. But he will survive, obviously. He did win national championships in 2023 and last year and nearly reached the Super Regional round in his other two years on campus in 2022 and ’24. With a lot more time on his hands now to recruit for 2027, he should be able to reload to Omaha status or close to it by next season.
But before the tortured and often hysterically blind LSU fan base can recite “Wait ‘Til Next Year” in fervent unison, let us review the devilish details of 2025-26, first uncovered by TigerBait.com writer Preston Guy’s realization of a past that predates him and via his excellent research.
LSU Football, Men’s Basketball and Baseball finished the 2025-26 season in SEC regular season play at 15-41 overall for a putrid .268 winning percentage. That’s 3-5 in football, 3-15 in men’s basketball and 9-21 in baseball.
The football season (7-6 overall) was not that surprising, considering Kelly never had one of the best quarterbacks in the country in 2024 – Garrett Nussmeier – near his best in 2025 because of a painful abdomen injury suffered in August. If Nussmeier is healthy last season with a defense that was very good, LSU may have made the College Football Playoff, and Kelly would still be the coach.
The basketball season (15-17 overall) was no surprise as it had the same 3-15 SEC record under McMahon the previous season and 14-18 overall. But just before SEC play started, McMahon did lose transfer Dedan Thomas Jr. – LSU’s best point guard since Tremont Waters on the 2018-19 team that won the SEC under Wade and reached the NCAA Sweet 16 under an interim coach with Wade’s suspension on suspicion of recruiting violations later proven right. LSU also lost key, veteran power forward Jalen Reed for most of the season with an injury for the second straight time. If those two – now at elite powers Houston and 2026 national champ Michigan – stay healthy, McMahon likely reaches the NCAA Tournament and is still the coach.
The baseball team’s season from “Pluto,” as Johnson called it, was truly shocking after the Tigers returned a decent number of key players from the 2025 national title team. They also went into the season ranked No. 1 with top-ranked recruiting and portal classes and opened up at 8-0 and 11-1. As the collapse started and continued, it got Guy thinking. And LSU just kept losing for a 30-28 and 9-21 finish. The 21 regular season SEC losses are the most in the history of LSU, which began playing baseball in the SEC in 1933. That broke the record by three games of the 1978 Tigers, who were 12-34 overall and 6-18 in the SEC in the last season of coach Jim Smith.
The last time LSU had a Trilogy of Terrible like this in the SEC – based on winning percentage – was in 1965-66 at 9-29 overall for a .236 winning percentage.
LSU’s football team was not to blame, however, as coach Charles McClendon’s squad finished 8-3 overall. It went 3-3 in the SEC, yes, but one of those losses was to No. 5 Alabama, which went on to win the Associated Press national championship that season at 9-1-1 and 6-1-1.
First-year LSU men’s basketball coach Frank Truitt went 6-20 and 2-14 in the SEC in 1965-66 after replacing Jay McCreary, who had gone 12-14 and 7-9. Truitt then left on his own and was replaced the next season by Press Maravich, who brought a son named Pete.
The 1966 baseball in the first season of Jim Smith went 9-14 and 4-12 in the SEC.
Based on the salaries of McClendon, Truitt and Smith in 1965-66 as compared to those of Kelly, McMahon and Johnson 60 years later regardless of any economy adjustments along with the new age cost of portal rosters, Kelly, McMahon and Johnson underachieved gigantically compared to the previous trio. No coaches in LSU history perhaps got paid more for losing than Kelly, McMahon and Johnson.
But the most amazing statistic from LSU’s hellish 2025-26 season in football, men’s basketball and baseball is those Tigers’ record against SEC teams that finished over .500 in league play.
Get ready.
LSU was 1-30 for an .032 “winning” percentage against SEC teams who had winning records against other SEC teams.
The baseball team led the way at 0-15. It reached nine SEC regular season wins only by getting three against South Carolina (22-35, 7-23 SEC for 15th place of 16 teams), two against Tennessee (38-20, 15-15 SEC), two against Kentucky (31-21, 13-17 SEC) and one each against Vanderbilt (33-25, 14-16 SEC) and Oklahoma (32-21, 14-16 SEC).
The football team went 0-5 against SEC teams that finished over .500 as it lost to Ole Miss (13-2, 7-1), Texas A&M (11-2, 7-1), Alabama (11-4, 7-1), Oklahoma (10-3, 6-2) and Vanderbilt (10-3, 6-2). Its league wins were over the likes of Florida (4-8, 2-6), South Carolina (4-8, 1-7) and Arkansas (2-10, 0-8).
The basketball team went 1-10 against SEC teams that finished over .500 against the league. Yes, the much-maligned McMahon was the only one of the three coaches to beat a team that finished over .500 in the SEC with his 78-70 victory on Jan. 17 in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center over Missouri, which finished 20-13 and 10-8.
It’s been a very long year around LSU. Some may feel that it has felt like 60 years.
So on this Memorial Day Weekend, bust out the champagne and bid adieu to this gone bust season.
And here’s to a less Haunted History in 2026-27.
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